Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity • Hacker News Board

Re: Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity

#41

Post by skydhash » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 5:00 PM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #40

hangonhn wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really is a huge service not just to the developed world that needs to decarbonize but also a huge service to the developing world. Solar can be put up quickly and cheaply and is good for about 2 decades and can be paired with cheap LiFo batteries to give round the clock electricity. Both of these are relatively portable. It can really bootstrap the economies of local communities where infrastructure hasn't been b…

Starlink isn't necessary. In India you can get 1GB/day of cell phone data for $4/month, and other developing nations aren't far behind. The solar+battery revolution is doing for power what cell phones did for communications in the third world in the 90's and 2000's.

The one issue with cellular connection is that some software and OS slurp data like there’s no tomorrow and you’re not paying for the connection.

Re: Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity

#42

Post by naIak » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 5:00 PM UTC

bee_rider wrote: post #24

willvarfar wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes the article talks about consumers scheduling things like washing machines during the day, or even filling up a battery.

This is the “smart grid” idea, right? We just haven’t fully explored it yet. Something I firmly believe is that there’s a ton of low hanging fruit for timing our energy use better. It is just hidden by the desire to present a uniform energy price. Like why not run our water heaters when power is cheap? Then if that became a thing, we might even be interested in larger water heater tanks. Batteries cost per volume, yo…

Power at peak times is cheap because load is distributed throughout the day. If everybody ran their heaters at the same time, power wouldn’t be so cheap and we’d reach the same situation we’re in.

Re: Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity

#43

Post by rdm_blackhole » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 5:02 PM UTC

bryanlarsen wrote: post #40

hangonhn wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really is a huge service not just to the developed world that needs to decarbonize but also a huge service to the developing world. Solar can be put up quickly and cheaply and is good for about 2 decades and can be paired with cheap LiFo batteries to give round the clock electricity. Both of these are relatively portable. It can really bootstrap the economies of local communities where infrastructure hasn't been b…

Starlink isn't necessary. In India you can get 1GB/day of cell phone data for $4/month, and other developing nations aren't far behind. The solar+battery revolution is doing for power what cell phones did for communications in the third world in the 90's and 2000's.

> Starlink isn't necessary. In India you can get 1GB/day of cell phone data for $4/month, and other developing nations aren't far behind.

There is a huge swath of Australia that does not have good internet access and/or very poor cell phone coverage.

And I am not talking about about people living in the middle of the desert, I am talking about people who are 10 to 15 minutes away by car from a small town.

So yes Starlink or it's local equivalent are necessary.

Re: Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity

#44

Post by danans » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 5:04 PM UTC

trollbridge wrote: post #23

vondur wrote: post #16

Wish they would do this in California where wholesale power can go negative for the same reason.

And they actually charge you a fee if you generate. My brother in law unhooked from the grid because back feeding was charging him $100 a month. To give away power.

> And they actually charge you a fee if you generate. My brother in law unhooked from the grid because back feeding was charging him $100 a month. To give away power.

Which utility and plan is this? I'm not aware of any California residential rate plans that charge you for putting power back on the grid, much less $100/month.

That said, wholesale electricity rates are set by high frequency supply/demand markets.

Recent residential net metering rates are closely aligned with wholesale supply/demand based rates, so most utilities will compensate your brother in law near $0 when you are pushing power to the grid when wholesale rates are He is using the grid as a battery, which comes at a cost.

This is of course changing as more grid connected storage comes online and creates demand for off peak electricity. In that case, you actually get paid for selling power back to the grid during high grid stress periods. I get paid a few hundred dollars a year in CA for doing that with my measly home backup battery.

Re: Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity

#45

Post by Forgeties79 » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 5:07 PM UTC

jimt1234 wrote: post #33

tasty_freeze wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For years I've been hearing one excuse for the US not doing more about climate change is that China is polluting more and if they aren't doing something about it then why should we? The argument always seemed disingenuous. For sure, China produces a lot of pollution as they are modernizing, but they are also investing a lot in the direction of sustainability. If we take the balance of (pollution produced - pollution…

Latest excuse: sustainable energy is a scam. https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/Ending...

They say with a straight face as they tout the merits of "Beautiful Clean Coal." This administration man...what's there left to say?

Re: Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity

#46

Post by unglaublich » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 5:07 PM UTC

energy123 wrote: post #14

willvarfar wrote: post #3

Ignoring the politics, we have to say that China has done the world collectively as a whole a major service in strategically developing and mass producing super cheap solar panels.

And the US and Germany since the 1970s for putting public funds into early research

US fossil fuel subsidies: 757B$ [0] US solar subsidies: 7B$ [1]

[0]: https://www.eesi.org/papers/view/fact-sheet-proposals-to-red... [1]: https://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/fossil-fuels/rene...

Re: Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity

#47

Post by loeg » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 5:08 PM UTC

notatoad wrote: post #9

cowboy_henk wrote: post #2

* only in the middle of the day, when the real price of that electricity may be negative, so it's still sold at a profit

still sounds like an incredible way to incentivize consumers to buy small-scale storage. if i knew i could get free electricity for an hour or two each day (or even each week) it'd be a very easy choice to drop ~$1000 on a home battery.

You'd spend $1000 to save $0.20 on electricity every day?

Re: Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity

#48

Post by jimt1234 » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 5:11 PM UTC

trollbridge wrote: post #23

vondur wrote: post #16

Wish they would do this in California where wholesale power can go negative for the same reason.

And they actually charge you a fee if you generate. My brother in law unhooked from the grid because back feeding was charging him $100 a month. To give away power.

A friend of mine is trying to build a house in a remote area of Southern California. He's planning to be completely "off-grid", generating power exclusively from solar. However, local regulators insist he hook up to the local electric utility. Further, in order to run the electrical cables to his property (from the substation), the local fire department insists that the brush is cleared around the new electrical cables. All in, he's looking at around $100K for something he doesn't even want or need. He said he's tried explaining this to local regulators, but they're not hearing it.

Oh yeah, yes, after paying all the money to get the electrical hookup he doesn't want or need - yeah, he's gonna be on the hook for around $100/month.

Re: Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity

#49

Post by fooker » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 5:12 PM UTC

jocaal wrote: post #36

jl6 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's hope someone can do the same for grid-scale seasonal storage. "Excess" solar electricity won't be free in (noon, summer) if you can easily bank it for (night, winter).

Power travels near the speed of light. In theory, the entire globe can be connected and countries with daylight can supply those at night in a cycle.

We would need impractically high voltages to minimize power loss over long distances.

Maybe something like microwave transmission or cheap superconductors will solve it.

Re: Australia has so much solar that it's offering everyone free electricity

#50

Post by kulahan » Thu, Nov 06, 2025, 5:12 PM UTC

shevy-java wrote: post #28

But it is so damn HOT there. And Australia has the most vicious animals and plants too. It is like an alien continent.

I'm pretty sure they get snow sometimes in NSW. AUS is big enough you can find many climates there!

You're not wrong about the plants and animals though. It's basically an island, and islands always end up with super weird flora and fauna - there usually just aren't many (any?) predators, so the competition takes species in weird directions.